I'm an MBA….now what?

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So…I’ll be the first to admit – I’ve spent the majority of my life living in fear.

Fear that I won’t succeed. Fear that I WILL succeed and then people will expect that of me all the time. Fear that I wouldn’t live up to expectations. Fear that at some point people would realize I’m winging it. Fear that I’ll disappoint the people who believe in me….

And that fear has driven me to do some pretty great things, get into pretty great schools and companies. A healthy dose of fear is what helps us survive, so I’m not advocating for it to be banished completely.

There’s a word for this?!?

But at some point, in the last couple of years after finishing b-school. I started to realize that I was climbing the proverbial ladder to some distant nebulous goal of ‘success’ I hadn’t really defined myself. Despite my ‘accomplishments’ (the names on my resume, the schools I’d gone to, the companies I’d worked at – all the things that generally people would point to and say I’d ‘succeeded” in life), I wasn’t really striving towards MY version of happy.

And then I realized I had no idea what actually made me happy. So I started wondering what exactly was driving me to choose the jobs, relationships, and lifestyle that I was pushing myself towards.

The more I read, talked to people, (even went on a silent meditation retreat to find that inner voice)…the more I realized that the decisions I was making weren’t based on the biggest, best, possible future I could imagine…it was me subconsciously running from some terrible yet-to-occur possible future where I was socially shunned, broke and a complete failure. Or, it was me being paralyzed by the idea that I’d been given so much that if I didn’t do something GREAT and worthy of all of these blessings (i.e. you got into HBS – you HAVE to go run some Fortune 500 company or start a non-profit to help a million people or else you should have let someone else who wanted to be a game-changer have that spot!), I’d be wasting my life.

Which, lets be honest – isn’t cute. It’s not very ‘game-changer’-ish to admit to yourself that you’re not living on purpose…you’re just scared of messing up.

I took pretty drastic measures to try and figure out my happy – I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that for everyone. But what I would say is it’s probably not a bad idea for ANYone considering Bschool…or who’s finished Bschool and are on that ‘real life career path’ now to stop for a minute and question your own motives.

Fear is healthy to a certain point. But Fear will only get you so far. And then…you kind of have to say F it and start listening to that little voice inside that was there all along that you’ve been ignoring that’s been trying to tell you to go left when the rest of the world is telling you everyone is going right and that you should follow the crowd because it’s safe over there.

I think us MBA-types sometimes lose respect for our intuition. We over-rationalize our way into the roles that “make sense”. But sense is usually based on the life we THINK we’re SUPPOSED to lead, not on the life that would allow us to be the biggest version of ourselves.

I’m not saying quit your job tomorrow because it doesn’t wake you up jumping out of bed for joy every morning. And I’m not saying don’t apply to the highest-ranked most prestigious b-school you can because you know they don’t have a major in what you want to do for your life purpose.

There are choices we make because we have responsibilities in life and the need to pay the bills is real. But. Some of the happiest people I know are happy because they took the plunge, got real about what THEIR happy looks like, despite what the “successful MBA life” looks like, and found a way to handle responsibilities their own way.

Close your eyes and rebel against your everyday version of success. Think about what decisions you’d make (what school you’d apply to, what job you’d take, what relationships you’d choose) if you weren’t afraid, if you were focused on YOUR version of happy. Think about what YOUR happy really is.

“In the professional world of leadership, ambition and potential are the most excessive commodities.” ― Unknown

Post-undergrad, ‘potential’ and ‘work ethic’ took you places. Post-MBA, it’s a 4 letter word that kiiinda means you’re just not that good at any one thing – but you could be! (but you’re not yet).

Most MBAs leave school bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to face the world head on as a newly minted officially ‘prepared for business’ and ‘ready to change the game’ (in whatever form that takes for each individual) alumnus.

Doing a full time MBA is a lot like going back to college. Except, you’re older, you’re less insecure, you’ve got actual money to spend, you know how to hold your liquor (hopefully), and after the first semester or so, you’ve realized that (shhhhh) grades really don’t matter – the experience does. So when you’re done with your two years, you’ve had some sleep (clutch if you’ve been banking pre Bschool), you’ve taken a break from being an adult and you’re re-energized to go back out there and move up, move fast and use everything you learned to have that dream job/life/passionate (or big money) career you went there to cultivate.

But unless you’re very lucky, or super focused, eventually you discover that outside of school, life becomes…well, normal life again. No matter how excited you are about your new career/role/opportunity/chance to show em what you got…at some point, – no matter how great the job is, the monotony of real life work settles in and Friday afternoons become a cherished moment in time once again.

And you begin to understand that you’re not going to move a whole lot quicker up the ladder than other folks. Fast-tracked maybe, but the Zuckerberg/Jobs/(insert-nerd-to-riches, fame-and-status-in-5-years-or-less name here) story will most likely not be your own.

surprised much?

Yes, you’re smart, you’ve got potential, you’re a hard worker, etc. But experience is what companies begin to pay up for post-MBA. And experience takes time. And you can’t leapfrog experience by being smart, capable, a quick learner, etc. You simply have to DO, be exposed to multiple different instances, situations, political circumstances, changing industry landscapes to gain experience.

That takes time. No matter how fancy your B-school degree is, you’ve got to put in the time, in whatever industry you choose. And your first job out can be a trial, even the next one or two – you’ve got leeway to discover that mix of your passion/skills/value add. But eventually, you have to be an expert in SOMEthing. Potential is only cute until you’re asking to be hired as an expert in something (which starts to happen about 3+ years out). Then people want results. Past experience. A focus. A tangible skill.

For a generation without job security, hopping from job to job is normal, and being anywhere longer than 2-3 years feels like an eternity. But eventually, you have to pick a lane and get good at something. Deciding where to put your stake in the ground is scary (at least for me) – what if you can’t pull it back up again and you’re stuck along one path afterwards?

Am I a marketer? A strategist? A financial analyst? A mix of one, two or all three? Can one be a marketer if they don’t live and breathe digital and social media platforms? Or a strategist who doesn’t churn out waterfall charts and harvey ball-laden decks with my eyes closed? Or a financial analyst without relishing the thought of building LBO models from scratch (like any banker today builds any models from a blank sheet anymore anyways. Ha!)

If I pick one and double down, do I pigeon hole myself? If I try to be all three, do I appear too broad and inexperienced in anything? What if I want to learn something else? At what point does it become too late to say…become an ‘operations’ person? When is the cutoff for the ability to ‘career-switch’?

just…can’t…decide…

It’s been a while since I lastposted here (I can’t believe it’s been almost a year!), mostly because at some point, while trying to figure out the answer to the above question, I decided to leave it all and remove myself from those (at the time, seemingly unsolvable massive) decisions and travel for a bit.

Maybe…this trip was indeed an escape. From the gravity of every day life decisions.

I’d like to think it wasn’t. I’d like to think it was a leap into the unknown, to discover which aspects of my life decisions truly matter most to me. A deliberate stepping off the hamster wheel of self-expectations and cultural mores or…a nimble sidestep off the path of self-imposed constraints I’ve woven for myself given the networks and career circumstances I’ve been fortunate enough to have over the years.

Only time will tell – I’m hoping I’ll have a better handle on how to best answer those questions when it’s all said and done. If nothing else, hopefully I’ll have learned something by the time I return!

Recently, I’ve been having the same conversation with a lot of good friends, MBA or not about whaaaat….THIS is what being a grown up is really about? No one told me it was gonna be like this! I thought I’d hit a point in life and kind of ‘have it all together’ – or at least feel way more proactively ahead of the game based on all my (sooo extensive) life experience. Instead, I feel like sometimes I’m just trying to keep up with my own life. My boss has a client where at one point he was frustrated because the team was just ‘putting out fires instead of being strategically proactive about the next steps for the future.’ It kinda feels like that. (except we added more resources and got it under control. My life? Not so simple)

Now this isn’t to say every generation before us hasn’t gone through this same revelation right around this time – but it HAS been a bit different for the ‘millenials’ that I’m talking to.

Gen X folks (and before) – their parents had pensions and insurance, from somewhat secure life-time jobs to cover things like health problems, retirement income, and fixed expenses. Folks that didn’t go to b-school or post-grad school have been working and saving money and don’t have that extra loan payment to think about (unless you DID buy some property and then you understand our pain).

So on top of paying loans, I and many of my MBA/post-graduate degree friends are

– Trying to save (since there won’t be any social security by the time I’m 60)

– Trying to be good children for parents that took care of us (when there are health problems, or other unexpected things that come up – I WANT to be able to say here mom/dad, I’m where I thought I’d be at 30, take whatever money you need, I got you. The fact that I can’t, to the level that I’d like, is not a great feeling)

– Starting to think about investing in some serious roots (i.e. buying a house, a car, heck, REAL wood furniture)

– Starting to solidify what we believe in (and unlearn all the things we told ourselves we SHOULD be in our 20s so we can focus on being who was WANT to be going forward)

– Trying to maybe travel, see the world, or experience the nicer, more spontaneous things in life (before the babies come, if you’re planning on that and your life is no longer your own)

– And of course (after going to at least 10 weddings in the last 2 years post business school) everyone’s getting married and starting to think about weddings (expensive!) and babies (expensive AND time/energy/emotional/attention consuming)

Oh and on top of that – trying to build a career, grow my network, create content to have a ‘brand’, and figure out what I’m doing with my life to actually give back so that others can have the same opportunities I had….etc..

Now, don’t get me wrong – these are squarely and definitely first world problems to have. I have NO misconceptions about that. This isn’t a woe-is-me pity party. But with that said, I DO want to do the most that I can with the time that I have and the life I’ve been given – so I think about all of these things holistically and am trying to figure out how to get it all done in one lifetime.

I enjoy my life, I appreciate the confidence, the open expanse of possibility before me, and the skills that I’ve learned over time that come with finally heading into my ‘30s’. I love my friends, and I’m blessed to have parents that are still with me that I CAN worry about not being able to spend as much as I’d like on them.

But I will say that I’m definitely not the only one who’s feeling a little overwhelmed by all the different competing factors that are pressing on my mind these days. And of course, I want to do well at all of them. Relationships, family, work, finances, preparing for the future, and still living life to the fullest – it’s a TOUGH balancing act. So I see why meditation and mindfulness practice is becoming such a growing industry among my generation. Unless we schedule it in, it’s almost impossible to simply slow down!

The best advice I think I’ve gotten is that it’s okay to take care of myself, to keep my mind, my body and my spirit right. Because it’s impossible to do well at ANY of the above responsibilities if I’m not healthy and in a good state of mind. But it’s hard to focus on investing time in mental and physical health when there’s always something pressing that needs attention.

So given this is a topic that is literally coming up every other day lately, would love to throw it out there and see what folks are doing to juggle it all.

If any of you have any ideas/advice/perspective/pearls of wisdom on how to manage all of it – please let me know! Would love to hear your thoughts….

I had dinner with a couple of girlfriends last week, both of whom were HBS alums, and in town attending the HBS Women’s Conference to commemorate 50 years of women at HBS. The conversation turned towards the realities of being a female MBA alum and what we expect (and the world expects) our lives to look like holistically after attaining this higher education.

Probably more than any other masters degree, female MBAs are expected to have successful families AND business careers with high earning potential. Those who decide to forego career advancement or !gasp! become a housewife post MBA are often looked at with condescension and confusion. “Why did you spend $150k to get an MBA when you’re just going to be a stay at home mom? Oh…you were just there looking for a husband…” (in that non-judgemental, but uber judgemental tone you learn so well in school)

As MBA women, we’re supposed to be able to do it ALL – not give up one thing for the other (which totally isn’t fair, as explained extremely well in this article in the Daily Beast). And “do it all” traditionally means have a successful family and a successful career.

HBS released study findings just in time for the women’s conference this week (featuring Sheryl Sandberg and other prominent successful women), where they asked why women weren’t moving up faster in the workplace. No surprise that the #1 reason is ‘the acknowledgment that family is more important to them than their careers’. #2? “taking leave or reducing hours” – arguably to be with family and kids more.

But before getting to the children, you have to find a partner. And given most women want someone who ‘matches’ them (in earning potential, education, lifestyle expectations etc.), that’s not so easy. Today women earn 60 percent of all master’s degrees and more than half of all doctoral and professional degrees. Science and Engineering fields notwithstanding, there are more women with masters than men. Which brings me to the conversation I had last night.

My very smart and ambitious Harvard MBA female friend wants kids. She knows she has a window. And she wants her kids to be raised by a parent, not a full-time nanny. But she also wants to rise quickly in her career and climb the ladder to a C-level position. Given the statistics and reality of the above, she knows that it will be hard to find someone ‘on her level’, even without the laundry list of non-tangible things she wants.

So her non-conventional solution to family and career? A house husband. Similar to the house-wife that many successful men marry who are not unintelligent, but also not jockeying for priority in life choices based on their ambition, he would take care of the kids, and be willing to move where she needed to go to continue to rise in her career (be it a different city or a different continent). He would take care of her emotionally and physically and be a good father. He wouldn’t need to work, or bring in a major share of income – that’s not what she needs.

Now, she doesn’t want someone effeminate or emasculated. She wants a strong, secure, confident real man – just not necessarily a breadwinner. She wants someone to support her – much like many women have supported their men in other single income families in the past. Run the household, make the meals, raise the kids and be a kind ear when work gets crazy. Not insignificant or simple tasks – but not traditionally male ones either.

My initial reaction was complete disbelief – “you’d never respect him, you’d cheat or he’d cheat because you wouldn’t see him as a man. He’s got to be at least CLOSE to your level of earning potential, where are you ever going to find a guy who’s OKAY with being a house husband and putting your career completely first that would be ‘manly’ enough for you?”

**Judge me here if you must, but despite being relatively liberal, I have to admit I still have a base level of old school thinking about what makes a man feel like a man (namely being a provider)**

But…as I continue to read multiple articles and talk with some powerful women who ARE getting it done, who have the families, and are kicking ass in the corporate world, it seems like many of them attribute that ability to ‘an amazing husband who’s flexible and understanding and picks up a lot of slack”.

AND, for whatever it’s worth, I know multiple MBA men who (kind of jokingly) say they’d love to be a ‘kept man’.

So what do you think? Can the house-husband work? Is it naïve to think it’s sustainable and it’s just a oversimplified unrealistic solution?

Or if we’re truly honest, is that what many career-driven MBA women need and just don’t want to admit to for fear of social repercussions and patronizing comments/attitudes about ‘settling’?

Doing what I need to do to climb the ladder and build a brand is scary…

I had the opportunity to talk with a couple of good friends recently – people I consider to be pretty amazing who have it together.

In the course of talking about our goals and ambitions and what were the obstacles to getting there, a theme became apparent – the very ambition that got us to where we are professionally was creating this huge feeling of anxiety about where we go next – and more importantly HOW we were going to do it.

As an MBA, or someone who’s just further along in your career, you’ve likely graduated from an order taker to someone who’s expected to sell, to produce, to create opportunities. Now, I’m really REALLY good at taking orders. I learned to be coachable playing basketball growing up and it got pounded in to me working at an investment bank after school.

But, what’s much more scary is that now I’m expected to think critically and synthesize information and get to the “Why does this matter”? And, I can’t rely on business other people bring in anymore – the higher up you go, the less you get to just execute on others’ sales ability – people want you to start bringing in revenue. Not just doing, but THINKING. CREATING. And that has been a very steep learning curve.

My time in finance taught me many amazing, useful things. What it didn’t teach me was how to think. I mean, really THINK about WHY I was putting this slide in, why this approach made sense for this client, why we were even in this position in the first place. In fact given that a large majority of people come from consulting, finance or corporate roles where there are layers of hierarchy, I’d venture to say it’s rare that people coming out of an MBA program were asked very often to think about the client, the business, our offering and how and why that should affect the project they were working on. They were told “this is the plan, here’s how we execute, and here’s your piece to do. Go.”

So fast forward to today where I’ve begun to realize that when you’re building a ‘career’ you need to have an opinion – a well thought out, informed, value-add opinion to build your brand…well things just got a little scarier.

The scary part about an opinion is that someone can look at me and say ‘That doesn’t make sense. You have no idea what you’re talking about. This is amateur hour.” – and I can’t blame it on anyone else. And it could be a great idea, but not explained correctly. Or it could just be…well, wrong. Which isn’t really that okay to BE when you’re an MBA (it feels like).

So what’s a girl to do? Start a blog! Lol (no, seriously – it’s part of why I did.)

But that’s just me. Everyone has to take a different route, but one thing that many people I know began doing to get to the next level all started with CREATING something and putting it out there – at work, in an industry publication, or going as broad as the entire online audience on the web.

Why?

– It forces you to have a point of view. If you aren’t focused in what you’re writing about, you’ll know pretty quickly (and so will everyone else)

It forces you to synthesize your thoughts. You know more than you think you do about SOMEthing or you wouldn’t have made it this far.

– It forces you to get over your fear of rejection (HA! Just kidding. I don’t know if I’ll ever be free of mine, but the more times you go through the nauseous feeling of “OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, they’re going to hate it, what was I thinking, AHHHHHH!” , the less paralyzing it is in the future, which allows you to be more prolific)

– It forces you to figure out what works and what doesn’t work for your audience.

– Best of all, it starts you down the path of becoming that awesome impactful person who’s highly respected for what they do who that you mentioned you wanted to be in your essays (and secretly dream about being when you see your classmates who started a company on the cover of Inc. magazine)

So…that’s the way I’m trying to quell (feed?) my anxiety around getting to the next level. I know that can’t be the only skill or professional gap that others feel they’re missing coming out of school.

What did you find when you graduated that you wish you’d been taught, or trained in? How have you addressed it and overcome it? And if you haven’t…what are you doing to try and get there?

It’s been almost 2 years since I graduated from Harvard Business School, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what I wish someone would have told me BEFORE b-school and definitely while I was going through my job search.

I used to have a roadmap for life…now it looks like this

So here’s my top 10….

1. They were right – at least half of the classmates I know (if not more) are at a different job 18 months out than they had when they left school. Which makes me really question what the career services team gets graded on in terms of performance…

2. Nobody mentions how much more confusing and scary (and cash constrained) life gets AFTER the MBA. Yes taking out loans to go on trips during school is an integral part of making deeper relationships…but damn…I still haven’t paid off enough to get back to the original loan amount I took out to begin with!

3. Generally (and please don’t take offense if this doesn’t apply to you), if you dig past the surface “things are going great!” conversation BS, people who didn’t go into finance, consulting, PE seem truly happier – but no less stressed out. But people STILL chase those jobs coming out of school like their life, status, and future happiness depend on it (for the transferable skills of course. Right…)

4. It’s scary and frustrating as a career switcher to feel like I’m starting from scratch again while I watch my non-MBA friends who now have 7 years of experience kick ass at their jobs

5. Getting an MBA didn’t prepare me to DO actual skill work in my industry at all really. It taught me how to see a big problem and make snap decisions on what should be done. But actually DOING work? I’m learning as I go and it’s a steep steep learning curve.

6. It’s going to take more time than I thought to do really BIG things (you know the stuff they allude to on your first day about how you’re going to change the world while forgetting to mention that it won’t happen quickly because you’ll likely be funneled back into an industry/job role that thrives on the status quo)

7. The expectations are SO much higher – at work, from friends, from myself, my family, would-be employers. Everyone expects you to be able to just DO amazing things, and KNOW things simply because you went to B-school.

8. Once you’re in the job…nobody really cares you have an MBA. If anything, some people who don’t have one hate you for it on the low.

9. Most people don’t want to admit to themselves that even if they knew what they really wanted to do…they probably still wouldn’t leave their well-paid, high status job to go do it.

But most importantly….

10. While my MBA prepared me to be able to speak eloquently even when I don’t have the answers – it most certainly did NOT help me figure out what I want to do in life, how to find my passion and purpose or give me any clarity on HOW I’m going to change the world. I tell a lot of MBA hopefuls that your time at school opens a thousand doors and exposes you to things you’ve never heard of before, but that can be paralyzing because what they DON’T do is help you figure out which one to go through. So you end up rationalizing why you followed the crowd (transferable skills, paying off loans faster and THEN you’ll figure out what you want to do, need another brand name on the resume to prove myself, etc.)

So, I figured I’d start a blog. And use it as an excuse to talk to MBAs and ask them about how they’re handling their lives and careers after 2 years of wedded bliss to the idea that they were handpicked out of the masses to do bigger and better things with the education and network from their MBA program.

Hopefully, I can have candid conversations with folks and share what they’ve learned, what they wish they knew going in (and coming out) and how they’re navigating the world with a few more letters after their name and all the expectations and pressures that came with it.

Maybe if I can get past the façade we learn to put up and hear some real stories, I can start learning how others handling work/life balance (ha!) while climbing the ladder, or choosing a path less traveled and the good, the bad and ugly that comes with that.

We learn in B-school (or at least at HBS) that social capital is scarce and no one wants to be associated with the person that doesn’t have it all together. But maybe if more folks knew it isn’t all rosy after you graduate and that many people are struggling with the same questions, insecurities, frustrations and life decisions, we could learn from each other’s experiences and create more realistic expectations for the droves of people turning to B-school as the next step in life.

Or not. We’ll see.

But if you’ve got a story – want to chat – have something to say about what you wish you would have known, hit me up! Would love to hear from you!